Steady flow through experienced hands

Steady flow through experienced hands


A visit to a number of gas production sites in Holland dispelled some myths about Corrib’s safety, and reinforced the primacy of trust

Denise Horan

TWO generations of children in the Netherlands have grown up trampling fields with gas pipelines running beneath. Gas pipelines almost a quarter of the thickness of those to be used in the Corrib pipeline. Miles of metal cylinders traversing the country’s northern landscape just a metre and a half below the surface.
Some carry processed gas, others raw. Most of the raw-gas pipelines have a design pressure between 125 and 144 bar, though the normal daily operating pressure in each is 66 bar. When gas finally flows through the onshore pipeline in Erris, the operating pressure will be 90 to 110 bar, with a design pressure of 144 bar.
In the Netherlands, some of the pipelines run as close as five metres to houses – real houses, inhabited by living families. Not all are so close, but proximities of 25 metres and 50 metres are not unusual either. In Erris, 70 metres was originally to be the closest the pipeline would be to any dwelling; following the Cassells’ report that was doubled to 140 metres.
Are there not round-the-clock protests? Is there no public outrage? Is a constant battle not being waged between the gas producers and the local landowners? No, it would appear, in answer to all three queries.
Gas production, you see, is part of life in Holland. Has been for 50 years now. Every home is connected to the gas grid, every family and community is benefitting from the country’s natural riches. Gas has been good to Holland and its people, as one local put it last week in the village of Dokkum.
But there’s more to it than blind economics. The connection to the land is strong in Holland. Having worked hard to reclaim so many green fields from the surrounding seas, the Dutch people value that which they call their own patch. That they are content to allow gas pipelines to run through their patch appears, more than anything, to be down to trust.
Holland’s largest oil- and gas-producing company, Nederlandse Aardolie Maatschappij (NAM), made its first natural gas discovery, in Coevorden, 60 years ago. Eleven years later, in 1959, it hit upon the famous Groningen field, near Slochteren – which turned out to be one of the largest fields in the world, and the Dutch people’s biggest ever natural windfall. The Groningen field covers an area of approximately 900 squarre kilometres, with producible gas reserves initially estimated at 2,700 billion cubic metres.
Since then, the company – which is 50 per cent owned by Shell, 50 per cent owned by ExxonMobil – has expanded its operations significantly and now accounts for 75 per cent of gas production in the entire country. In 1961, it became the first company in western Europe to drill for gas in the North Sea. And, in addition to the enormous Groningen field and the offshore wells, it also owns and operates 200 other smaller fields around the country, the gas from which is mixed with that from the Groningen field, in order to extend the length of supply and ensure it is constant, even during periods of peak demand.
Right now, 60 years after taking its first steps into an unknown world, NAM is producing 50 million cubic metres of gas per year, and it is estimated that it has sufficient resources to keep the country supplied for another half a century.
But back to the matter of trust. Like all multi-nationals, NAM is out to make money – and it has done, so much in fact that in the last 50 years it has paid €170bn in taxes to the State. That primary aim won’t change; reality is, after all, so-called for a reason. But NAM has a firm grip on another key reality: without its reputation the wells of gas are worth nothing.
In the last six decades, it has encountered little resistance to its plans for gas production, except in the environmentally-sensitive Wadden Sea, where 20 years were required for permission to extract gas to be obtained (SEE PANEL). On land, there have been no such difficulties. There were no protests at the outset of gas production, which, NAM spokesperson Marjolein Boer admitted last week may have had as much to do with a post-war desire for progress as anything else.
The intervening decades, however, have brought no escalation in problems. “The landowners welcome us,” Marjolein declared matter-of-factly, as if we were all familiar with the concept. Then she revealed NAM’s secret: respect for the people involved.
“It pays to take good care of the community and of safety,” she said. Her colleague, Ruurd Bosma, Cultural Technical Advisor with NAM, concurred and added his own piece of advice, shaped by personal experience. “Explain exactly what’s happening; that takes away the fear,” he said.
Ruurd knows what he’s talking about it. Because his job is talking – to the landowners affected by the laying of pipelines. His first task in any new project is to visit all the landowners along the proposed route. He then asks them for permission to walk the land, and subsequently produces maps outlining the proposed route and, in particular, the section of their land that will be affected.
Then there is a series of open evenings with landowners and more one-on-one meetings. Sometimes Ruurd visits landowners three to four times to discuss things like way-leaves and compensation. The key thing from NAM’s perspective, and the reason Ruurd is such a vital cog in the smooth turning of the company’s wheels, is consistency. If landowners see the same face every time they engage, they learn to trust.
Though better-known as a breeder of contempt, familiarity can also, it seems, be an able nullifier of it.
The effectiveness of this approach is borne out by the efficiency of the results. Last year, a 22km onshore pipeline from Gasselternijveen to Torenwijk was proposed. NAM started looking for the permits – 50 were required –  in May 2007, knowing 20 to 25 road crossings were included on the route (two are required on the nine-kilometre onshore pipeline for Corrib). By April of this year the permits were granted. In May work started on the pipeline. Of the 80 affected landowners along the 22km stretch, there was not a single dissenter.
For the landowners, there is nothing to lose. If they are crop farmers, their produce is stopped for a year or so while the pipeline is being laid, then the land is restored and harvests are possible once more. Compensation for the barren season is sufficient to soften the break with tradition and ease the tedium of idleness. Once the land is restored, their only restriction is in relation to deep digging on certain parts of the land, with manageable safety criteria clearly laid out and readily accepted.
Safety is not an issue that’s raised by landowners, the NAM representatives claim. The company’s reputation has earned the people’s trust. Where questions are raised, they tend to relate merely to noise levels and aesthetics – concerns which are quickly allayed.
PJ Rudden, Group Director with RPS, the independent engineering company responsible for the construction of the onshore pipeline in Erris, told a story last week of his first visit to Holland to see gas-production methods and sites in operation there. After 25 years in the gas pipeline business, PJ was sure he had pretty much seen it all. But a real-life cameo in a small village in northern Holland assured him he hadn’t. Having been told by a NAM guide where a particular pipeline was running under the ground, he looked ahead and saw children from a nearby creche playing in a playground. Playing away happily and carefreely – as children do. Dancing and laughing, swinging and sliding – with a 66 bar gas pipeline running just beneath their feet.
They’ll never believe me back home, he thought. So he took a picture.
Proof of the possible?

Denise Horan travelled to the Netherlands for two days courtesy of RPS and SEPIL. The delegation also consisted of: Colin Joyce, Shell Communications Advisor; Alan Mee, Shell Deputy Manager, Mayo; PJ Rudden, Group Director, RPS; Lorraine Herity, RPS Consultation Team Manager; Eimear Fitzpatrick, Mary Murphy PR; Toni Bourke, Editor, The Mayo Advertiser; Marian Harrison, Reporter, The Western People; John Melvin, Sports Editor, The Connaught Telegraph; Eamon O’Boyle, photographer.